Cat Senior Portraits: Part I

Hi Friends,
I was honored when my daughter asked me recently to shoot her senior portraits. She had her "official" yearbook photo done a week or so ago at a local studio as required by her school, but eschewed the full studio package in favor of having her dear old dad do her "real" senior photos.
We're using a variety of lighting techniques, but so far, all have been done with remote hot shoe flash units (Nikon SB-800 Speedlights).
In this series, we shot in an empty parking garage. I used one SB-800 with a DIY beauty dish modifier as the key light, and a second on the floor behind Cat, shooting through a homemade cookie (black cardstock with a bunch of slits cut in it) to give a little interest to the background.
We then moved to an old warehouse, changed to a single SB-800 with a shoot-thru umbrella. In this image, we had the added challenge of balancing flash against the ambient light of the late afternoon sun:
Day 2: again using a single SB-800 with a shoot-thru umbrella, we moved to the steps of a local school. Early evening shoot, balancing flash with the ambient light of the darkening sky by metering for the sky, underexposing slightly to retain some of the color and contrast, and dialing in the exposure for Cat via flash output:
Same location, no sky to worry about:
And the last image of the day:
We're still shooting, so stop by again to see what's new, or visit my gallery at: www.pbase.com/haverstick.